Here’s a few tricks I’ve learned that have helped cool down our place. Just a note on our place—we have a 2nd story townhouse with full sun exposure and no shade trees. Temps indoors have exceeded 110, and with a day-sleeper in the house, we’re vigilant about keeping the temps down.

1. Close up tight through the heat of the day. We cover the windows with miniblinds, blackout curtains and sometimes even a quilt to keep it as cool as we can for as long as we can.
2. After the hottest part of the day, get the air moving, and get the hot air “up and out” of your house.
3. Open the chimney flu and the woodstove doors to allow hot air to vent up. If you can open a downstairs door and an upstairs door, this will happen also.
4. Don’t forget about your attic. One summer we placed a box van in our crawlspace door with the fan pointed into the attic—it exhausted the hot air in our house straight into the attic and cooled the house dramatically.
5. Don’t have a fan? Think again. Turn on the range hood fan, the bathroom fans, even the furnace with the burner off. Anything, to get the hot air up and out!
6. Consider cooling one room. Central AC isn’t an option in our building and window air conditioners aren’t permitted. We did find a stand-alone unit (purchased in winter to get the lowest price) which allows us to cool our master bedroom. On days when we can’t get indoor temps under 90, we have a family camp-out in the master bedroom and the kids bring in their sleeping bags to sleep at night (saving us cranky children the next day!) We run the unit when indoor temps get over 90 degrees, and even when that’s a few days per week, we’ve never noticed a significant increase in our power usage (I think we offset this by not cooking on hot days).

This post is part of a series I’ve entitled “Frugal August” and is inspired by (though not copied from) the book The Complete Tightwad Gazetteby Amy Dacyczyn. My tips are meant to build on hers, but generally are not duplications

IMAGE CREDIT: The modern fan company.

In the dining room was the piano (electric), which had been left on and one little red LED was there. Six phone/ipod/Bluetooth/laptop chargers sat atop the piano—all plugged into a power strip which was also left on (though nothing was charging).

We live in a very energy-efficient house, but we weren’t a very energy-efficient family.

Here’s few ways to triage your energy use:

*unplug it, even if it’s not in use. Most appliances drain a tiny amount of energy even if they’re plugged in but powered off. Unplug the coffee pot, the entertainment center and even the piano, or plug your appliances into power strips that can shut off the whole “block” at once.

*Even if you hate the look of those new efficient lightbulbs—put them in your porch light. In most homes, the porch light gets the most use of any, averaging nine hours a day. I was recently given one of these lightbulbs (usually $5) in return for signing a petition—we also occasionally get them from the utility company.
They don’t look good in our recessed lighting but we have found that they’re especially handy in the vaulted sections of our ceiling—where the bulbs are exceptionally hard to change!

*hang your clothes up to dry—in the shower, laundry room, patio or outside. It’s more efficient and better on your clothes. I found a nice clothesline at the dollar store for…. Wait for it…. A dollar.

*Be thoughtful about your energy use: boil only as much water as you need and think of ways to re-use it. I have a large kettle with a strainer for pasta. I cooked pasta in the strainer, but below I put the garbanzo beans to boil (they were going in the same salad anyhow). After the beans and the pasta were done, I tossed the “pre-compost” bucket into the water and boiled another 10 minutes. Three dishes prepped with one boiling of water and only one pot of water, none of which got dumped down the drain!

* Adding a low-flow showerhead will save you on your energy use as well, by using less hot water to run the shower.

This post is part of a series I’ve entitled “Frugal August” and is inspired by (though not copied from) the book The Complete Tightwad Gazetteby Amy Dacyczyn. My tips are meant to build on hers, but generally are not duplications.

IMAGE CREDIT: freedigitalphotos.net.

I found Gazelle, which will PAY ME for the gadgets, and also, they’ll manage the shipping, and even send me a box. (So I do NOTHING, Literally).

Oh, and I get $53 (varies depending on the make/model of your equipment. Give it a try–the link is below.

Get Cash For Your Gadgets at gazelle.com!

My committment to you is taht I only run ads for companies that *I* use adn taht I think are a good value.

I’ve recently found Inksmile.com and added their ads. In my small home Business (I have a mobile business services company), toner is my single greatest annual budget item.

A refill for my four-color lazer printer runs about $600 at Office Depot. Since I need a refill every six weeks, as you can imagine, things in the toner department get out of hand quickly!

I’ve started using Inksmile.com myself, and their HP lazer toners run about 30% less than the store. They provide free shipping and often have promo codes (if you’re thinking of placing an order, let me know and I can check cj.com for the latest promo codes to see if there’s a better deal). I used 5OFFSMILE on my $170 order yesterday (two black toners)but then saw them on Twitter promoting a one-day-only 15% off code. I emailed about it and they credited me back the $17.97 (how’s that for customer service?)

The toners always come within a day or two, so yesterday when I was printing 300 pages of legal documents and the printer flashed “order supplies” I was able to place my order and know it will be here in time for the end of the week rush.

I hope you’ll give them a try!

Well, my Twitter friends tell me it’s Earth Week, and they wanted to know what I’m doing about it. I’m doing a few things, but not because it’s Earth Week. Doing something different that I could do every day just because it’s the right thing to do. That’s dumb. If it’s the right thing to do, I’m going to do it every day. I hope you do too.

However, I could stand to learn a little bit more about energy-efficiency, so I imagine that’s why they have the “week” and I think the timing is nice that it falls within Financial Literacy Month.

Let’s find the crossover between the two and tackle away!

I visited The US EPA’s Web site for energy efficiency today and found it very helpful!

I know I have a leaky door–there’s quite a draft in the winter, and in the summer, we’re thankful for the cooling breeze…but needless to say, we need to tackle that energy sucker. I was relieved to find that the Web site has tips on what weatherstripping to choose and how to install it! Score!

It also explains that leaving our cell phone chargers plugged in when they’re not plugged in to a phone will deplete energy as well. YIKES! I’ve got at least 8 chargers hanging around the house plugged in with nothing attached to them. I had no idea.

Take a quick spin around the US EPA’s Web site and see if you can save a few bucks on your utility bills!

This is the 13th in a series of 30 post for April, specific to financial literacy. Today is a short distraction for financial/ecological instruction.